Welcome ! This blog is a space for critical conversation on the state of global crisis, democracy and transformation. It has a particular focus on post-apartheid South Africa and its multi-faceted crisis. The South African crisis is linked to the crisis of global capitalism. This blog will feature critical analysis, debates, crucial documents from grass roots movements and useful online resources as part of Defending Popular Democracy.

Saturday, 23 August 2014

This article was published as a Mail and Guardian opinion/comment piece. See:http://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-21-the-numsa-moment-leads-left-renewal

NUMSA and the Struggle for the Future of South Africa

The post-colonial left in Africa was
savagely defeated over the past few decades. Southern Africa, in particular,
was a Cold War battleground with proxy wars and destabilisation. However, the
Cold War did not end on the battlefields of Angola nor with the signing of
Nkomati Accord, but with the assassination of Chris Hani, General Secretary of
the SACP, on April 10th, 1993. Hani’s assassination drew to a close
a dangerous era of global geopolitics and was meant to mark the defeat of South
Africa’s left and working class.Two
decades of ANC-led neoliberalisation, which has surrendered democracy,
development and state formation to capital, consolidated the strategic defeat
of the left and working class in South Africa. The NUMSA moment and process, led
by South Africa’s largest (with over 330 000 members) and most militant trade
union, is all about confronting this strategic defeat. It is about a battle to
determine the future of South Africa and reclaim the strategic initiative for
South Africa’s working class.

The stakes are high with intensifying attempts
to destabilise NUMSA. This includes disciplining it in COSATU, squeezing it
through the Department of Labour, the formation
of a rival metal workers union by forces aligned to the ANC-SACP and the
assassination of three NUMSA shop stewards in Kwazulu-Natal, on the eve of an
NUMSA convened symposium with Left
Parties and Movements, amongst other pressures. The assassination of the
NUMSA shop stewards is similar to the violence unleashed against workers on
August 16th, 2012, in Marikana. Such violence attempts to end democratic politics and
crushes dissent. The undermining of the NUMSA initiative, by dominant political
forces, will determine whether we are becoming an authoritarian post-colonial
African country, like Zimbabwe, or whether we have a future as a vibrant,
plural and transformative democracy.

We are at a turning point in our democracy:
either the common ruin of all ormaturation of our democracy. With
Marikana the economic and political consensus of the post-apartheid order,
favouring capital, has been unhinged. Madiba is gone and the phase of ‘national
reconciliation’ is past us, but we have achieved a commitment to a constitutional democracy
grounded in egalitarian values, non-racialism, non-sexism and a broad
conception of democracy. At the same time, as the ANC unravelsand loses its grip on power, it has to
appreciate it will be held to account in the future for what it does in the
present. The Arab Spring and the rise of a democratic left in Latin America
have been part of the challenge to authoritarian neoliberal capitalism and are
instructive in this regard. The maturation of South Africa’s democracy requires
open, democratic and fair contestation at all levels. Ideological contestation
from the democratic left and right is authorised by South Africa’s
constitution. In this context, the emergence of a left initiative from NUMSA
has a legitimate and democratic right to exist.

NUMSA’s right to pursue its decisions to
break with the ANC-led Alliance, withdraw electoral support for the ANC, build
a united front and explore the formation of a workers party or movement for
socialism derives from its appreciation of history and the role workers have
played in the making of South Africa.When
NUMSA looks into the past it appreciates three historical developments as the
basis for its political decisions: (i) The Freedom Charter, which was the programmatic
cornerstone of the ANC-led liberation movement, was embraced by workers and has
not been realised. NUMSA believes in the national liberation commitments made in
the Freedom Charter to build peoples power, bring the state into
transformation, including nationalisation, and the centrality of the principles
of non-racialism and non-sexism. It refuses to accept apologia from the ANC
about apartheid being determining of the present. Instead, NUMSA appreciates
contingency in history as expressed through the choices made by the ANC to
abandon the Freedom Charter while embracing global capitalist restructuring and
BEE over the past two decades. In this context NUMSA is fully aware of the
costs to workers and the African majority. (ii) NUMSA is aware of the militant role
and tradition of shopfloor politics in the fight against apartheid. It is alive
to the struggles of the vibrant shop-stewards movement, which it was part of,
that confronted racism in the workplace, reached out to communities and built
modern industrial unionism. The independence of the labour movement, its
unifying role and the struggles it led where necessary conditions that
contributed to the end of apartheid. This is why NUMSA is defending an
independent labour politics in COSATU and the need to ensure labour as a
democratising force is not compromised. (iii) COSATU is one of the few labour
movements in the world to develop a capacity for strategic politics. In the
1990s this expressed itself as a social democratic agenda for labour: the RDP,
the ANC-led Alliance and class struggle driven neo-corporatist bargaining through
NEDLAC. NUMSA knows that this strategy has been defeated and hence the need for
a new initiative from the socialist labour left.

It is in this context NUMSA hosted a Symposium of Left Parties and Movements
to learn about the meaning of left politics in the world today and inform its
political decision-making about a strategic way forward. It hosted the leading
left forces in the world, either in power, in opposition or in resistance. The
symposium included themes on: left understandings of capitalism’s crises and
limits, strategies of transformative resistance and the nature of political forms.Consistent with its tradition of worker
control these deliberations where a moment of intense political education for
NUMSA, the United Front it is building and left forces.

The crises of capitalism theme was articulated by NUMSA itself in describing
South Africa’s post-apartheid political economy. This was not unique, given
that the dispossessions, inequality, ecological destruction, hollowing out of
democracy and general crisis of contemporary capitalism was brought to the fore
in the various presentations made by international participants. Essentially, the new left in the world is
struggling against a neoliberal capitalism that is increasingly becoming
authoritarian and driven by a logicthat
will destroy all planetary life forms. It is in this context that the new
global left is the most resolute and progressive force in defending democracy
against corporate capture and ensuring it is utilised for transformation. This perspective
stood out from the Latin American
contributions, given that it is the first region in the world to go furthest in
breaking with neoliberal capitalism.

The jaded left debate in South Africa of ‘reform
versus revolution’ was challenged when various strategies of ‘transformative
resistance’ were shared in the deliberations. This ranged from mass driven participatory
democracy (such as neighbourhood councils) to re-embed the state and secure national sovereignty like Bolivia,
Venezuela and Ecuador; advancing the solidarity economy and networks in Brazil,
Venezuela and Greece; food sovereignty to ensure countries can feed themselves
like Bolivia, Ecuador and through the land struggles of the Landless Workers
Movement from Brazil; rights of nature discourses (Bolivia and Ecuador); nationalisation
of key sectors of the economy; new forms of regionalisation including a new
vision of Europe articulated by Syrizia, the leading opposition party in
Greece; strengthening trade union
independence and solidarity across borders through Left Forums (Sao Paulo Forum
and Asian Left Conference), movement to movement links and regional Left
Parties like the European Left party. All of this adding up to alternatives to
the left of 20th century social democracy.

Over the past three decades various labour
movements have spawned workers parties such as in South Korea, Zimbabwe,
Zambia. The NUMSA symposium scrutinised these experiences to understand the
limits and lessons that could be learned. However, most striking in the
deliberations was a recognition that communist vanguard parties have been
eclipsed by new left political forms: electoral parties (Germany), party
movements (Brazil), left fronts (Greece, Uruguay) and movements for socialism.
In Bolivia the Movement for Socialism confronts the class structure of its
society by anchoring itself in community, workplace and social movements. It
has a mass character and rootedness which gives it capacities to advance
different forms of democratic power, from above and below.

The NUMSA symposium is one of many crucial
steps to unite South Africa’s rather dogmatic and fragmented Left. It is
imagining a new socialism, with different premises, various historical
reference points, new conceptions of strategy and a serious rethink on
political forms. It is leading a cutting edge process of left renewal. Not only
was it inspired by its international guests, but it also certainly inspired
them. NUMSA is not building its process around individuals, like a Chavez, but
around worker control, power and capacity. NUMSA is at the forefront of
thinking about a new future for South Africa, in which workers play a central
role, democracy is strengthened and transformation happens.

Author: Dr. Vishwas Satgar attended the NUMSA symposium as a friend of
NUMSA and as an expelled member of the South African Communist Party. He is the
editor of a Democratic Marxism book series.

Follow by Email

Followers

About Me

Vishwas Satgar has been a grass roots activist in South Africa for more than 3 decades. He is currently engaged in supporting the Solidarity Economy Movement in township communities, supporting food sovereignty campaigning , climate jobs campaigning and defending popular democracy in South Africa. His academic interests include a focus on African political economy, Empire and Global crisis, Green Global political Economy and Transnational Alternatives.